New MMORPG.com writer David Murrieta explores the recent Issue 9: Breakthrough expansion that was released for City of Heroes / City of Villains and offers his insight into the addition. A preview of the article is below:

Breakthrough", the title for City of Heroes' ninth expansion, accurately describes the purpose and idea behind what Cryptic hopes to do: cracking their own original design models, once again, in order to present the playerbase with an innovative system to add to their game. I'm referring, of course, to the hugely hyped Inventions System, which are Issue 9's main addition. It caused, ever since it was announced, a considerable number of debates among players who believed, like the developers themselves once did, that loot and crafting were definitely out of the question in a game about superheroes and crime fighting. Almost inevitably, though, Inventions happened, and after a month of the expansion's release, we're starting to see the effects.

The economy that players in followed, in general, was the first thing to be affected directly, indirectly affecting other things like slotting options and build plans. While Base Construction with Issue 6 brought some changes to the way players earned and spent their Influence, the impact enormously decreased within little time, and heroes who created a balance between playing in Supergroup Mode or not stabilized their earnings back to numbers very similar to those they were previously used to. Taking that into account, will the same happen with this new Issue?

You can check out the full article at this link.